Random musings on history, politics, and more

Archive for May 4th, 2010

I’m not really a fan of children, which I know must come as a surprise to many of you. They’re noisy and dirty and annoying and, yeah, don’t get me started. I’ve also never bought into the to-me inexplicable sentimentality that surrounds children. I mean, I certainly don’t wish them ill, as such, but I honestly don’t get the whole trite and cliche’d bit about how their lives are so full of hope and promise, so much potential cut short, blah blah blah that gets trotted out every time a child dies in an accident somewhere, boo hoo, wait, why am I a bad person for not feeling all angsty and heartbroken about the death of a complete stranger who couldn’t even tie his or her own shoelaces yet?

To me, children are kind of replaceable, but it’s the old farts with a half-century of knowledge and wisdom and experience under their proverbial belts who are most valuable, and whose premature loss is truly tragic. Just a slightly different take on things, I guess.

This, as you can probably guess, means I’m kind of wishy-washily on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate that mankind is doomed to suffer through for all eternity. Not out of any great moral conviction or anything, mind you, but just because I don’t see children as the great be-all end-all culmination of modern civilization the way some of the more annoyingly vocal pro-life activists seem to, and I kind of tend to, by default, reflexively disagree with anyone who seems to be frothing at the brain…

I’m also one of those people who doesn’t see government involvement in every aspect of daily life as something to cheer on or, heaven forbid, look forward to.